Civilization 7 creative director Ed Beach on new eras and leaders

Civilization 7one of the most anticipated games of 2025, will include many significant changes, most notably New Ages mechanics. Game of Civilization 7 will span three different eras – Ancient, Exploration and Modern – but players will support the same leader throughout. Polygon had a hands-on preview of the game at Gamescom in 2024, as well as the opportunity to speak with some members of the Firaxis Games team, such as executive producer Dennis Shirk. According to Shirk, Civilization 7 creative director Ed Beach “didn’t want to do Civilization 6.5; he wanted to do something that would make our fans start over. Old strategies won’t work. They need to open up and look at it with fresh eyes to understand how to play the game.”

Now we have an interview with Ed Beach about those decisions, as well as how the Civilization game development process has changed over the years. A lot has changed since then Civilization 6 came out in 2016 and Civilization 7 it will be a completely new experience.

Polygon: How do you choose civilizations? What about the leaders? Has this process changed over the years?

Ed Beach: As the Civ franchise has grown over the years, so has the process of choosing which civilizations and leaders to include in the game.

In the early stages, if the designer thought a civilization might be fun or interesting to play as, that might be enough to warrant adding it. However, as the Civ community has grown and more players from around the world become Civ fans, we have both the desire and the ability to be more thoughtful about who is represented on the global stage.

Typically, civilizations and leaders are chosen when they have the right combination of several factors: their prominence in history, how well they represent our player base, and the gaming experience they offer.

For Civilization VIIthis process was further developed. Civilizations and leaders can now be selected separately from each other, and your choice of civilization is no longer saved throughout the game, but is tied to a specific era.

For leaders, being able to choose them independently means that we can truly study historical figures beyond traditional heads of state. We still have kings, queens and emperors, but now we have famous figures like Harriet Tubman or Machiavelli, neither of whom led a nation, but both of whom left an indelible mark on history.

For civilizations, since they are tied to specific eras, we can “dig deeper” into historical time periods and select empires that may not be as well known in general, but were incredibly important and powerful during those periods of history. And given several eras, we can even imagine the evolution of some empires like India, from the Mauryas to the Chola to the Mughals.

What is the research process when integrating new civilizations? Are there cultural consultants and/or groups of historians that you work with to ensure the accuracy of the information?

The process of researching the integration of civilizations is a lot of fun and requires a lot of work. Many of the developers at Firaxis Games, as you might expect, have a natural interest in history, and we do our best to accurately represent cultures, be it the language they speak, the clothes they wear, and more.

During development Civilization VIIAt Firaxis Games we had two full-time historians – one specialized in East Asian history and the other in Scandinavian and medieval studies. Both were important not only to help us represent cultures carefully, but also to create the Age experience and figure out which civilizations are good candidates for study.

As some may know, we also consulted directly with the Shawnee regarding their inclusion in Civilization VII. It was truly a wonderful partnership.

In terms of researching these civilizations, did you discover anything unexpected about any of them that was difficult to adapt to?

We have always had huge problems representing cultures without any written evidence. We’ve always wanted to include early native North American cultures like the Mississippians, but we never imagined how to create a leader of such a civilization that left no documentation of specific people. Fortunately, our new Civil VII the approach of freely connecting leaders with civilizations solved this problem. Now any leader can be paired with Mississippians, although other North American Native leaders such as Tecumseh and Pachacuti are especially recommended.

Are there civilizations/leaders/time periods that you’ve always wanted to include but haven’t had the chance to yet – or perhaps haven’t done so because they would be too difficult to adapt?

Because of Civ’s original structure, in which you play as the same civilization from start to finish, we were always faced with a creative challenge: trying to figure out which “version” of an empire to choose as representative throughout history. The situation becomes more complicated when there are civilizations that did not exist in 4000 BC, such as America.

This is something that Ages helps us solve – by dividing the story into individual game chapters and rooting each era in certain parts of history, we can select the civilizations that exist in the era and show how empires rise, fall, grow and evolve. A civilization like Songhai, which may not be as well known in popular culture today, was enormously influential in its time—and is ideally suited to the Age of Discovery as a representative of what was then West Africa.

Did the team ever think about the opposite of what they ended up with with the change of mechanics of the new leader? (This will entail playing as multiple leaders, but with the same civilization.)

We considered this approach, but quickly ran into several problems. If we had different leaders in different eras, but you kept the same civilization, we would limit ourselves to choosing only those civilizations that have a clear representation in all three eras – for example, China or India. If you were to choose America, for example, what leader would have led America in 4000 BC? Or the Incas today?

We also understand that since so many things change from era to era, it is important for you to have a holistic experience. We’ve found that most players’ understanding of what’s going on in a Civ game tends to focus on the leaders – Gilgamesh was your friend, not the Sumerians. If a leader remains the same over the centuries, you can create a narrative about your opponents as they remain constant.

Will there be any mechanics tied to ideology? Or will it be classified as a civil matter, as in Civilization 6?

Yes! Recently, in our “modern era” live broadcast, we showed that ideologies play a crucial role in this era. Basically, after learning Civil Society Political Theory, you can choose an ideology to follow for the rest of the game. This has a major impact on how diplomatic relations with other leaders develop; shared ideologies strengthen alliances, and conflicting ideologies create friction. Ideology also plays a big role in the Modern War Legacy Path, one of the paths you can take to unlock the game’s ultimate victory conditions.

Since launch Civilization 6we’ve seen a couple of games trying to challenge the 4X mantle (Humanity And Millennium). Is there anything in particular that the Civ team could learn from these games, or perhaps from other Civ-inspired games over the years?

It’s been really interesting to see how other games in the 4X space are tackling some of the same issues we’re addressing, and to see how players react to their decisions. For Civilization VIIWe have a unique advantage: we have a very long history of games within our own franchise, and therefore our efforts to Civilization VII are really focused on finding ways to fix some of the shortcomings that we’ve identified in our own games. Hopefully we’ll create another Civ game that will stand the test of time.

Is there something you wish someone would ask but no one does?

I think perhaps the question “What part of your work week is the most enjoyable when developing a Civ game?” And I’ll have to answer in our multiplayer sessions on Tuesday afternoon. We run them regularly throughout the project, and thanks to our new Ages system, multiplayer matches can be completed within 2-3 hours. As you can imagine, this made these activities even more fun!

Civilization 7 will be released on February 11 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Windows PC.